Thursday, 29 December 2011

It was an inevitability that my deep love of cheap clothing and my endless searching for unique garments would eventually culminate in this: making my own clothes. Thanks to my loooovely parents for buying me a sewing machine for Christmas, and discovering that I have a hidden housewife gene and can actually sew, that has now become a possibility. In fact, it's even become a reality. I worked out last night how to sew a skirt, got all excited and sewed a collar to match, then some bows, then another collar.

I even worked out how to sew everything using my own pattern (secret housewife gene has well and truly taken over!) This I will eventually upload as a pdf (once I work out how to do that) for you all so that you can make your own if you're feeling creative :)

I'll be away and without a computer for new years, so I hope that you all have lovely, fun and stylish times bringing in twenty-twelve! I also wanted to say thanks to everyone reading this (especially those two awesome ladies and frequent blog commenters Kirsten (Elissiam) and Miss Tallulah Porkchop, your comments always make me smile), and thank you to everyone in the fashion blogging world for being such an amazing, lovely and supportive community, and welcoming this new face into blog world this year. I am really looking forward to blogging in 2012!

Tuesday, 27 December 2011

I actually don't think it's ugly - I love it. "Ugly Christmas Sweater" is just the name of the Chictopia competition that I've entered this in! I picked up this glorious jumper vintage up from a 390 yen store in Japan (equivalent to a $2 store) and have never regretted the purchase. It's such an interesting multi-patterened jumper - and check out the other photos too, because the back is even crazier than the front!

I really want to buy that cutout dress from Modcloth. I may just even. Or I'll perhaps attempt to sew something in the same way from an old dress (I got a sewing machine for Christmas!! Super excited!).

Anyway, the point of this post was to let you all lay your tired post-Christmas eyes on these lovely things, and look forward to bringing in the new year with some sparkles and glitter!

Sunday, 25 December 2011

I had two Christmasses this year: one with my family and another with my boyfriend's family. So, it was required of me to put together two Christmas outfits. Here's some quick snaps of my second Christmas outfit :)

Velvet – a very annoying, easily frayed fabric, providing much fun for the family and visiting relatives as you stress about hand sewing the hem all “shrumpy” and lament that you don’t have a sewing machine.A sewing machine – a lovely surprise present which is given to you by your parents a day before christmas because they can’t let you suffer with hand sewing any longer.Annika – a very happy girl.A finished DIY velvet skirt – a half hand-sewn, half machine-sewn little velvety bundle of happy and christmas spirit!

Also, the story with the balloon - my uncle is a professional magician (seriously, probably one of the coolest jobs you could have + make money from) and whenever we have a family gathering, he is forced into doing a magic show for us all. Hence making balloon animals, and balloons that look like love hearts. So I thought it would be nice to incorporate it into my Christmassy outfit.

I even went so far as to paint my nails in Christmas colours! Haha. Vote for me on lookbook :)

Friday, 23 December 2011

I had been in hospital for a while when taking these photos (totally trending the hospital tag on my left wrist there), and really over wearing a shapeless white gown everyday. So, out on a day pass, I had to dress up as much as I could to make up for it, and take some photos of course. Dressing up and taking photos helped with the general boringness of being in hospital and sickness. Also, so did DIY. DIY was a great boredom-killer. Making millions of little velvet bows not only helped me to get good at sewing, but I also now have millions of little velvet bows to attach to both clothes and my hair. Win win win!

Saturday, 17 December 2011

Just because I've found myself stuck in hospital this week, doesn't mean I can't get stuck into some DIY. In fact, hospital is more or less the perfect place for whiling away mindless hours hand sewing and cutting up fabric. And as I'm stuck in a ward of old, seriously old people, I'm competing with a whole lot of little old ladies to become the best sewer in this place. The DIY is ON! (I'm so lame.) I convinced my lovely mum to go and buy me a whole bunch of stuff from spotlight, winning a whole big bag of material and thread with sympathy for having to be in hospital (muh ha ha). So i figured as I can't do any outfit posts at the moment (a lookbook on how to best decorate ones shapeless white hospital gown, perhaps?), this is what I've come up with after a few days of mind-numbing boredom (keep in mind I also have a bunch of leads connected to me and an IV in my arm so my sewing skills have been somewhat compromised (so no laughing)):

- A mustard scalloped peter pan collar with embroidery details

- A plain mustard peter pan collar

- Several velvet bows in all sizes, with both bobby pins and safety pins on the back to create bows for my hair and bowties for my clothes

- The beginnings of a red velvet skirt (and there will also be some red velvet bows from the offcuts, I'm sure)

- And some more peter pan collars of all colours, sizes and shapes (did I mention I'm planning on becoming the queen of collars?)

And of course, there's some (bad quality) photos of this for your viewing pleasure if you all care to scroll down the page just a little bit.

Hopefully I'll be out and blogging again just before Christmas. Much love to you all :) xxx Annika

Sunday, 11 December 2011

I didn't have a thing to do today (and the weather is entirely miserable) so I spent it making 3 quite nice scalloped peter pan collars using some bits of old felt that I found in a box, some random buttons and a hole punch, inspired by the fantastic Honestly WTF DIY blog. I'm a little bit proud of them because they look quite nice and didn't cost me anything to make, and I also wanted to post photos of them because I totally shook it up and changed the DIY just slightly to make a double layered peter pan collar as well. Craaazzzy! Haha... ahh I need to find other things to do in my life. Anyway... enjoy!

With the first one I just followed the DIY on the blog, and it ended up just like they said it would. Easy enough.

As I had nothing else to do today, and some spare felt, I made a second one and embellished it with a golden button and some black felt.

The third one I made was completely purple, but the idea of it is so I can layer it with the other two. It's the same size as the others (because I couldn't be bothered cutting up another template), so I just kind of plonked it under the other one. Who knows if this will actually sit well once worn out. Still, it looks pretty cool!

(Above picture) Layered with the first collar.

(Below) Layered with the second collar.

So really I made FOUR collars. Well now. That's pretty nifty. All in all a productive day :)

Saturday, 10 December 2011

So too bad it’s summer here. I’m autumning it up today with this gorgeous leaf patterned dress which I scored vintage some years ago, and was actually thinking about selling online, because it had never fit me – until now! So I am trying to set up an online store at the moment to recycle my wardrobe, but it’s really difficult because then I start taking pictures of the item I want to sell and decide I really like it and will keep it instead. But I REALLY need to get rid of some clothes!!! Anyway, I hope you like it :)

It’s near impossible to dress well in a hot climate. These photos were taken up in very very northern Australia on the beach, and if you zoomed right in on my face I’m pretty sure you would be able to see the sheen of sweat (and these photos were taken at SUNSET). I had just bought all these amazing autumn clothes from Japan, and then found I was unable to wear most of them once in Northern Australia! The most that I could do every day was to throw on a singlet top and a long vintage skirt – very basic, but at least looking like I’d made some effort. So basically the point of this story is, if you live in a hot place and are able to still care about what you wear, then I really admire you!

Also, my obsessions at the moment? You may have noticed. Bowties and Petticoats. Awh yeeeeah.

It's now the 7th un-sunny, un-summery day of summer in Sydney. I was super excited to wear all my summer clothes, but I can't even! What is going on? I got this lace bustier bodysuit yesterday from Vinnies and I reaaaaally like it, I will be wearing it much more when the weather warms the heck up!

Tuesday, 6 December 2011

So I've been chopping up all my dresses lately, trying to turn them into something nice, and it has actually been working kind of alright! You can check out the DIY for my other cutout dress here. Basically for this triangle cutout, all you need to do is get a cheap vintage dress (one with a waistline already sewn in is best, but not necessary), turn it inside out and carefully slice out an upside down T where ever you want the triangle cutout to be, fold back the little triangle flaps that you make, and then hem around all the edges either using a sewing machine, or using small handstiches like I did here.

Here's a pretty badly drawn paint diagram if you don't get what I mean:

Saturday, 3 December 2011

Inspired by A Pair and A Spare's DIY blog, I have been cutting up a whole bunch of my dresses in the last couple of days, trying to give a new life to some of my older and slightly more boring dresses. I've done two and a half so far! It's really simple and easy to do, and I didn't even know that I could sew, so really anyone can do it! And it makes your dresses pretty and new!

This is how you might want to go about slicing up your very own dresses:

(here is my very informative paint diagram)

1. Turn dress inside out. I then used a right-angle ruler because I wanted a triangle shape cutout from my dress. If the dress already has a waistline sewn in, that's great because you can use it to go from. Put ruler against the dress with the bottom edge on top of the waistline, and the sloping edge sloping towards the middle of the dress. Draw with pencil along the longest edge of the triangle.

2. Do this on both the front and the back of the dress.

3. Cut out the front first, then the back, along the line you have just drawn in a triangle shape (do NOT try and cut the front and back together, you will end up accidently cutting through the waistline (like I did at first).)

4. Cut down the middle of the piece that you have just cut out (down the side of the dress) just to the waistline.

5. Fold the triangle halves down into the dress, folding on the waistline. Then hem all sides. I just hemmed it by hand, it doesn't take long because it's only a very small section.

6. Do on other side of dress (unless you want it to be lopsided, which, you may!)

Also, please don't try this first on your favourite, most expensive dress. Grab a dress with a cute print from a vintage store or op shop for cheap, or find one at the back of your wardrobe, so that you won't end up in tears/super angry at me if you stuff it up a little (mine was give to me by a friend, and she got it from KMart, but had never been worn because it was too unflattering).